group photographs

In the earliest studios, when a slight movement could mar a necessarily long exposure, two or more sitters increased the chances of a spoilt plate (and often incurred higher fees). As shorter exposures became possible, family groups were more often attempted, though it sometimes proved difficult to fit everyone in against the studio background. Larger groups were regarded as a particular challenge, and were occasionally created by combining on one print figures from several different negatives. But by the 1880s, faster plates allowed a proliferation of institutional, sporting, occupational, and other groups, often taken out of doors. In the ports of California and southern Australia, photographers took sailing-ship crews on the decks of their vessels. In the USA, college graduation classes became an important new branch of business. To ensure that all faces could be clearly seen (and maximum sales achieved), photographers generally sought to group the participants in rows on more than one level. Soldiers and athletes were as likely to be asked to squat on the ground as small schoolchildren, and the convention was quickly established—and has never died—that chairs in the centre of the picture should be allocated to such senior figures as officers, teachers, team captains, employers, and newlyweds. The deployment of hands and (sometimes) feet in group portraits will often reflect suggestions made by the photographer, and folded arms or hands on bare knees have both persevered as the body language of manliness. The invention of the panoramic camera, which exposed the film section by section, allowed fleet-footed 20th-century schoolboys to appear at both ends of the same institutional group. Photographers like the American Neal Slavin (b. 1941) have turned the group photograph into an art form, a microcosm of organizations, communities, or whole societies.

— Robert Pols

Bibliography

• Slavin, N., When Two or More Are Gathered Together (1976).
• Linkman, A., The Victorians: Photographic Portraits (1993).
• Tonkonow, L., and Trachtenberg, A., Multiple Exposure: The Group Portrait in Photography (1995)